


I Can Be Your Long Lost Pal

by morphogenesis



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Food, Gen, Mini Road Trip, Motherhood, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 15:45:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14980361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morphogenesis/pseuds/morphogenesis
Summary: It’s a long way from SOIS’ base to LAX, and Lotus and Seven decide to carpool. Along the way Seven proves he’s an expert at dodging questions about himself, but Lotus is persistent.





	I Can Be Your Long Lost Pal

**Author's Note:**

> I love Seven and Lotus and needed more fanworks about them. (In another life, this would've been full-blown Seven/Lotus.) Thanks Sean for Seven’s “real name,” and D for reading the first draft. Title is, of course, from “You Can Call Me Al” by Paul Simon.

In a cafe over a desperately needed breakfast, Hazuki pressed Seven once more about The Gigantic, tapping her nails on the tabletop like stilettos. They sat outside in a pleasant 23°C but Seven wouldn’t relax and enjoy the moment. He stirred his latte until the foam dissolved. "Do you know what you're asking here? It's not an easy story to hear about your kids." 

Hazuki scoffed. “You’re not a parent, are you?”

"How'd you know?" 

"Because I doubt any woman married an animal like you.” Hazuki turned her teacup in its saucer; her gibe was milder than her over brewed drink. Her ex-husband couldn’t make decent tea either. Yet another thing she did best alone. 

"Hey! I was married once." He chomped on a scone, raining crumbs down his front. Hazuki pictured his exasperated bride scolding him as she swept up, saying her mother was right and she should've married her father's junior at work—and then Hazuki realized that was the third story she’d invented about Seven since he offered to accompany her from SOIS’ base outside of Los Angeles to LAX. He rarely volunteered information about himself—like his real name. 

"My point is: I’m their mother. I need to know everything they lived through." Just a taste in Building Q made her sick. 

She’d lied to Nona and Ennea, tucked away safe at university, when they asked what on Earth dragged her last minute to America. “Work,” she groaned. “It'll be your turn soon enough. Ennea, don't lie—is Nona studying for exams?”

“Mom!”

After hanging up Hazuki took a deep breath, pressed a hand to her throat, and swallowed her tears. She would never say how she wanted to vomit after SOIS coldly debriefed her like she was the criminal, or how her heart raced when a phantom revolver muzzle dug into her temple. They would never know that story, but she needed theirs. "So it all starts with Cradle Pharmaceutical," she said.

Seven nodded. "That’s close enough." 

Hazuki protested his evasive answer, but Seven went silent and refused to continue until she nodded to go on. He didn’t soften the story for her benefit. She interrupted him only once—“Was Nona there when Akane died?"—and sighed gratefully when he shook his head. The things her girls endured… No wonder they never spoke of it and claimed amnesia to doctors, detectives, and their own parents.

They were both quiet once he finished his story. Hazuki turned and watched traffic slow to a crawl as the light turned red. When she lived in California for work, she missed Japan’s trains the most. She hated driving. Ennea got carsick at the drop of a dime, Nona always fidgeted in her booster seat and unbuckled the straps, and sometimes the radio would settle them and sometimes it didn’t. Back then Hazuki’s biggest worries were daycare costs and work and how her husband always seemed annoyed when he came home to them. She thought moving back to Japan would treat the underlying symptoms, ignorant that the worst was coming.

Three times in Hazuki’s life she thought she’d fall apart and never pick herself up again: when she failed the entrance exams to her first choice university, when the girls disappeared, and the night a year later when she stopped her husband at the door, refused to let him in, and said “I’m done.” She closed the door in his face and listened to him walk away. She crept into her sleeping girls’ bedroom, sat on the floor, and wondered where was the surge of strength and determination she was supposed to feel when she looked at them? How would she survive this? How could she do this to them after they lost so much? 

Mama always said _Oh don’t cry Hazuki, what is that going to change?_ Her eyes were dry when she nodded to Seven and said, “Thank you. For everything.”

Seven picked the rest of his scone to pieces and let them fall across the tabletop. “Was my job.”

“Oh take the gratitude, you idiot!”

He chuckled. “Now that sounds more like you. You’ve been so serious I was afraid your mind was goin’ Grandma.”

“What the hell is wrong with you that you’re so calm!”

He swept the crumbs into a neat pile with one giant hand, and gulped down the remainder of his drink though it must’ve burned his esophagus. “I did all my panicking in Building Q.”

“Like when you thought you’d never see a certain stunning, brilliant woman again?”

His eyes widened. “See? You’re having delusions too. The mind is the first thing to go—” And then he flinched when she tossed her leftover danish at his head.

* * *

The car crawled toward LA like it was losing hope they’d ever make it. After slogging through traffic for two hours, Hazuki slapped the steering wheel and swore. “Americans are even worse at driving now!”

Seven reclined his seat and it groaned under his weight. SOIS rented them the largest SUV possible and he still bumped her if he scratched his nose. “You’d be surprised. I got friends in traffic control and hear Japanese drivers pull all kindsa crazy shit. Some things are universal.” Like men’s stubbornness. An hour ago, she asked him again for his name and he shrugged and said “‘You can call me Al,’” like the old Paul Simon song.

“Al?”

“Huh?”

She scowled at him as the sun glare stung her eyes. “You just wanted a ride to LA, didn’t you?”

“What, ‘cause I was gonna drive myself illegally?”

“Why didn’t you just take an SOIS chauffeur?!” She refused because after spending hours in a room with them and their impassive questions about her waking nightmare, she needed escape. 

“Same reason you didn’t. They give me the creeps.”

Traffic advanced by a millimeter and a honk behind them demanded she move now, now, now. Hazuki stayed exactly where she was. She raised an eyebrow at Seven. “I thought you’d want to work with them.”

“Hell no. We might have similar goals, but I can’t stand sitting around filling out paperwork until someone says it’s okay to go get the bad guys.” He cracked his knuckles and it sounded like a gunshot. “I respect ‘em but I can’t operate like ‘em.”

“So you won’t drive without a license, but you’ll ignore orders if you think it’s right?” Hazuki didn’t care about the principle, but about data mining his thought process. Seven was a file she couldn’t decrypt and she hated failing.

“It’s not a contradiction to me. When I first got back from The Gigantic, my Superintendent threatened to fire me for insubordination.” He snorted. “Because he never told me I could move, even though kids’ lives were on the line. Before I stormed outta there one of my seniors caught me and said, ‘Good job. Sometimes upholding justice is more important than following the rules.’” His face softened. “I got demoted and transferred over it, but that’s still my motto.”

“It’s more likely to get you killed.”

“Then I die helping others,” he said. “Who gives a damn about paperwork?”

Hazuki pushed on as, mercifully, the gap between them and the next car widened. “I can respect that.” 

* * *

They said goodbye over carryout in the parked car. She ate a California Club sandwich that was more avocado than bread, surprised that she desperately craved it here when she never bought avocados at home.

Home. Hazuki was gonna go straight home and order her girls to come over for dinner. She’d sweep all of her work off the dining table, smother it with their favorite dishes, and ask them about everything they did the past week. She’d scold Nona about her study habits and remind Ennea that she was behind on her job search. After they left, Hazuki would find all her photos and watch them grow from newborns held one in each arm to proud high school first years to young women with all the potential in the world.

Hazuki blotted her mouth with a napkin. “When is your flight?”

“Cancelled it,” Seven said around a mouthful of hard-boiled egg. He’d ripped open a paper bag to turn his lap into a buffet of finger foods that would feed Hazuki and the twins and still leave leftovers.

“Why?”

“Can’t go back yet. This whole thing showed me I gotta change my priorities.”

“Like investigating who helped with the First Nonary Game?” Hazuki said that like she was answering a question about basic coding.

“...You aren’t losing it as fast as I thought.”

“I tried myself after the girls came home. I had to know why and how I could protect them.” She looked at him with narrowed eyes and a hard-set mouth. “Maybe it’s time to start again.”

“Guess I can’t convince you otherwise?”

“Why do you care?”

Seven put a hand on her shoulder, and even his gentle squeeze was a vise grip when she tried to escape it. “‘Cause you have someone to go home to and they need you.” 

Instead of arguing, Hazuki slapped his hand until he released her. Then she grabbed a receipt and pen from the console and wrote down a few names, emails, and networks. “You’ll need a remote-access VPN, but these are the sources I used a long time ago. There’s a site that can get you fake papers if you’re hell-bent on staying here.” She offered the paper to him held between two fingers, so that when he took it his hand brushed hers. “Don’t give me any crap about not wanting to break the law.”

He scanned the paper and nodded. “Alright, but you saw I’m no good at picking fake names. Any ideas?”

“Well…” She put a finger to her chin. “Some people call him ‘Al,’ but he’s just a Tanaka. Detective Kazuo Tanaka.”

“I like it.”

She cleared her throat and said in her best Seven growl, “‘Thank you, I never would’ve had such a clever idea.’”

“Oh, can it.”

When they sped into Departures she grabbed a small backpack, leapt out of the driver’s seat, and wished him good luck with his new life as an illegal driver in LA traffic. She was halfway to the door when he called “Hey Lotus!” and she turned.

Seven stood outside of the car, leaning on the passenger side so hard it tilted under his weight, and looking at her like she was dissolving before his eyes. “Thanks, but I hope we never meet again.” He spoke harsh words in a gentle voice, letting his real meaning permeate her mind like rain falling on freshly tilled soil. _Have a good life. Have a safe life._

Hazuki nodded to the anonymous man who might wander forever without a home and gave her her life back twice over but left her with nothing but stories, and replied “If I never see you again it’ll be too soon, Tanaka.” _You too._


End file.
